The Whole of the Moon
by The Cat's Whiskers
Summary: We can survive 3 weeks without food 3 days without water because it is invisible we take for granted the air without which we die in 3 minutes...
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer:** _The TV show _Supernatural_ and all characters therein are owned by assorted Americans, not me. This fiction is purely for the enjoyment of readers; no money is being made. All Original Characters remain the property of Catherine D. Stewart and may not be used without the express permission of the authoress.

**_Summary: _**Humans can survive 3 weeks without food, 3 days without water; because it's invisible, we take for granted the air without which we die in 3 minutes.

_**Rating:** _'T'/17 because of the odd fruity phase, minor gore, and incidental semi-nudity but there is no graphic or gratuitous infliction of suffering, violence, sex, etc.

**Credit:** to Dean 5339 for the _Inside the Legend _'Tulpa' explanation for the episode **_Hell House_ **on www.Supernatural.tv's site. Full lyrics of _The Whole of the Moon _by The Waterboys can be found after the Epilogue. NB – Keedysville, Antietam and Sharpsburg are all real places.

You saw the whole of the moon  
I was grounded  
while you filled the skies  
I was dumbfounded by truth  
you cut through lies  
I saw the lone empty valley  
you saw Brigadoon  
I saw the crescent  
You saw the whole of the moon  
I spoke about wings  
you just flew  
I wondered I guessed and I tried  
you just knew  
you came like a comet  
blazing your trail  
too high, too far, too soon  
You saw the whole of the moon

**THE WHOLE OF THE MOON**

**Chapter 1**

Even though he knew it was useless, Dean was unable to prevent himself straining against the harsh, thick ropes that were cutting into his wrists; even though he had rubbed his wrists raw and bloody, there was no give in the ropes.

He gritted his teeth and bared them defiantly as Chuckles deliberately weighed the dagger in his hand so Dean could see. It was a huge curved thing, practically a scimitar, with a gold handle and a blade etched in an ancient language that Dean doubted very much said something as innocuous as _Please note this knife may be sharp, always hold using the handle_. The hilt was set with small round rubies, but there was insufficient light in the cavern for them to sparkle, so they were as black as the blood lapping at Chuckles's feet. Dean kept his eyes firmly on him, ignoring the gory corpse laying broken barely two feet away.

In retrospect, he should have known that Bad was loitering with intent, but the unexpected smoothness of the gig had thrown him off his stride, apparently. He and Sam had accepted the job at Keedysville, Maryland on behalf of Caleb only because the other Hunter was a long-time friend of John Winchester's and therefore they knew he wasn't guffing them – his inability to abandon his current case was genuine. They had approached the place with wariness and extreme caution; any place of violent death, and of course _mass_ violent death, was a place that left gaping psychic wounds in the fabric of reality.

Like all Hunters, the Winchesters actually did their best to steer clear of the better known battlefields/massacre/mass-suicide sites, as did Hunters in whatever country of the world was their native land. When Dean had been 17 and Sam 12, John Winchester had flatly and without hesitation refused an offer – really a plea – of $1.2 million U.S. to go OUTCONUS – a cumbersome military acronym meaning to fly abroad OUT of the CONtinental United States - and take care of a Tulpa that was causing problems in a small village a half-mile away from the polish town of Brzezinka, known in English as Birkenau…the site of Auschwitz.

He and Sam had been braced for all sorts of horrors. In the United States, the Western and South Western States were littered with festering paranormal hotspots of Indian massacres by the invading white man's Army, whereas the same mystical energy that seeped from Civil War battlefields were especially raw in the Eastern to Midwest States, where most of the battles had taken place, particularly in areas along the famous 'Mason-Dixon' Line that separated the Northern and Southern States, and which had bisected the country in the Civil War. Never had that conflict been so anguished or so bitter along that invisible but profound dividing line. More than anywhere it was there that the same family could lose father and husband fighting for the Union and brother and son fighting for the Confederacy or vice versa…sometimes on opposite sides of the _same_ battle.

Atrocities had been committed on both sides and after the assassination of Lincoln when the bigoted Liberal Radical elements had sought to seize power behind the Presidency, great suffering had been caused when the Liberal Radicals had implemented their cunning but tragically effective 'if he's black he's right' policy of Reconstruction in the Southern States, fomenting racial hatred and murder in their regrettably successful plan to steal the money and land of hard-working families who had owned it for generations.

For many years it had been a mess, and virtually every place had its own shameful history that made the locals unable to meet your eyes; in this area, as in others, many black men who had fought for the Confederacy had returned home only to find themselves pilloried and ostracised, even murdered, by their own families and communities as the carpetbaggers deliberately instigated black-on-black crimes and racial divisions so as to rape, murder and steal land, livestock and money with impunity.

And of course, the battlefield in such dangerously close proximity to Keedysville, Maryland just had to be none other than Antietam, the 1862 Battle of which had been the most devastating in the American Civil War, resulting in the deaths of 23,000 Americans, with a nearly 50-50 split between the Union and the Confederacy in death toll, with 12,000 Union soldiers and 11,000 Confederate soldiers who would never rise again.

On top of that, of course, it was _Eastern _Maryland…or as Dean sarcastically put it, there was an extreme danger of 'us being scalded by hot soup'…as in Alphabet Soup. Name the floating noodles of your choice: FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, ATF, FEMA, JAG, NCIS, U.S. Navy SEALs, U.S. Marines, Army Rangers, West Point, the Naval Academy…et cetera, et cetera.

For once, instead of arguing, Sam had understood Dean's multiple tangents of trepidation. As Sam had admitted, a) they were demon hunters, b) their usual financial foundation was credit card fraud followed by hustling pool and Dean participating in illegal, unlicensed (why they were illegal) high-stakes poker games, c) they routinely used fake identities, d) the Impala's trunk carried an arsenal of weaponry large enough to kit out an entire Marine division to their satisfaction and e) Law enforcement computers inconveniently declared that Dean Winchester was 1, dead, actually and 2, shot dead as the murder 'suspect' in a series of brutal attacks on young, pretty women. All of which led to f) that they were smack-bang in the middle of Spook Central in more ways than one and would have to operate with the care of a cleaner dusting a Ming Dynasty vase, lest one of the Men in Black were to cast an eye in their direction and wonder to him – or her – self, _I wonder who those two are?_

Incredibly, however, the poltergeist had been destroyed without attracting attention in the wrong quarters and instead of their usual battering, the only damage to Sam and Dean was a broken fingernail and the loss of a night's sleep. Still, the pair had breakfasted at the diner calmly but not leisurely, desiring to put a comfortable distance – say the entirety of West Virginia and maybe even the Allegheny Mountains - between them and Keedysville.

During their visit, Sam's 'Shining' had, understandably, been picking up signals from all over the place leading him to be able to see and hear like he was getting Digital _Lord of the Rings_ while everyone else was stuck with a 1950s black-and-white Bakelite and _Leave It To Beaver._ During the first day in Keedysville Sam had embarrassed them both by doing stuff like holding doors open for women who weren't there, and nodding politely to elderly gentlemen only he could see and didn't know weren't real until they walked through an intervening wall or someone else.

They'd just walked out to the Impala when the woman had approached – not that a sultry brunette with a low cut top who was 'stacked' was something they were going to flee from. She had sidled up in clear nervousness and with tear-bright eyes identified them as the Winchesters brothers – the Hunters. Her name was Selena and her distressed tale had been short and simple – she and her little brother had moved to the area temporarily from St. Louis to stay with their grandparents while their father recuperated from a serious operation; she had dismissed warnings of a 'monster' in the forest until a huge thing that looked like a giant dog but which had been able to walk upright had snatched her brother as he played not five hours ago. Running back to try and get help even as she despaired of what she could tell the sheriff without being laughed at – or arrested on drugs charges - she had been met on the edge of town by the local crackpot – into tea-leaves and crystal balls and all that – who had told her was in luck because the "'Winchester sons are at the Antietam Diner right now.'"

Dean and Sam had tooled-up and followed her. Even now, with Chuckles tauntingly testing the tip of the dagger with his finger and mock-wincing at its sharpness, Dean knew there had been no lack on either his or Sam's part. Selena's agitation and nervousness had been entirely congruent with someone who has had one hell (no pun intended) of an emotional and visual shock – the snatching of a beloved sibling by a creature that she '_knew' _didn't exist outside a movie theatre – and she had led them up the hiking trail fast and sure to get to the spot where her brother had been snatched, again entirely consistent with someone desperately aware that time was of the essence to save their loved one.

So, when she had stumbled and gone down on one knee, Dean had automatically stepped forward to give her a hand up, and had been unprepared when she smoothly surged up and smashed a tennis-ball sized lump of wood against his head, plunging him instantly into unconsciousness.

He had come around fairly quickly and with clear vision, which despite his splitting headache indicated he was fortunate enough not to have suffered a concussion or worse. Disturbingly he had been naked to the waist – but no further, thank you Lord – and even more disturbingly bound to some sort of pillar; his ankles were tied with ropes at the base and his hands, rather than simply being pulled behind his back, had been bound at the wrists high above his head, unhappily like when the Wendigou had hung him up like a side of beef in Blackwater Ridge. Although gloomy, there were holes in the 'roof' sufficient to let in a reasonable amount of light and he realised that he was in some sort of cavern that had formed in a crag in the woods. It was ancient, for the stalactites and stalagmites that protruded from roof and floor were as thick as a fence post and long; there were other 'pillars' formed by the two meeting nearby and the sharp roughness against his bare back indicated against what he was tied.

With a laugh, Selena had hove into view dangling the dagger like a trinket, and had launched into the sexy villainess routine, pressing her breasts to his chest, her hands roaming everywhere, violating where she had not been given permission to touch and greedily fondling him even as she mock-declared that it was a 'pity' to gut such a handsome hunk of man. Then she had hurt him, digging in her nails and scratching his balls in anger when his body did not respond to her lascivious groping; unsurprising, since he had hardly even noticed her or what she was doing.

His eyes had rapidly adjusted to the dimness of the cavern sufficiently to see that other than him and her it was empty. Her nymphomaniac routine had barely impinged as he had looked past her with intent peering. He merely hissed from her punishment as his hope fought a brief, desperate battle with his realism that maybe the absence of Sammy meant his brother had been able to get clear; inside, he knew better.

He had always demanded that his brother follow their Dad's training: that if it became clear that something was a trap or a battle against something which was, at that point, too powerful to kill, then get the hell out of Dodge and regroup to go back in harder, faster and literally more explosively - John Winchester had invented the Salt & Holy Water hand grenade. Unfortunately Dean's attitude had been the classic 'do as I say not as I do' stance of preaching the sermon rather than living it, since where Sam's safety was concerned, Dean had no compunction about throwing himself between his brother and whatever form the 'bullet' took.

Just like most of Dad's diktats, Sam had strenuously rebelled and despite his inner hope of Sammy being sensible and legging it like a jackrabbit from the obvious set-up, Dean knew that in reality, the instant he went down Sam would have attacked Selena like Cujo at the end of the book/movie in full-on rabidity.

At that point Chuckles had made his entrance. Dean had no idea what he was, other than that he wasn't really human. Shape-shifter Dean had been born human, the Wendigou had once been human, Meg Masters was, apparently, a possessed human; they and many similar entities like them shared that subtle facility of facial expression, that indescribable yet obvious manner of movement that showed they were or once had been a member of the human species; no matter how debased, you could still see tattered remnants of a Dolce & Gabbana suit, or to use another metaphor you could still see glimpses of the bright hues of the Sistine Chapel through the filth.

But this guy was human like a one-size-fits-all, off-the-rack suit with too-short arms and half-mast pants you bought as cheaply as possible for Aunt Betty's obnoxious son's wedding; his features had a certain harshly-angled woodenness and he moved with a slight stiffness of gait like he was an animated mannequin, a paint-by-numbers person done by someone who had only ever seen pictures of a human rather than how a live one moved.

Incongruously, he looked like a middle-aged tax accountant standing there in a conservative suit with only black pits of eyes revealing his true evil. He was a tall brunette and generically good looking, but in a bland way. He lacked that extra sparkle, that indefinable yet instantly recognisable _something_, which would have raised him above the crowd. He was a like catalogue fashion model who would never quite made it up to the level of catwalk king. If this were a scene from a James Bond movie, he would always be listed in the script as 'No.3 Henchman'.

He lacked that extra dash of an unquantifiable yet quintessential element people could only inadequately label _chemistry_, but which humans could all instantly spot a mile away in a pea-soup fog. It was that which made shorter, plumper men attract prettier women than their taller, plastic-perfection brothers, or which made plainer, plumper women keep a man's attention in a way that their prettier, more lissom sisters couldn't, or which enabled two people or a group of people who had met not five minutes before at an audition walk out onto a theatre stage or into a TV/movie studio and light up the camera where other combinations had been lifeless on the screen, or which meant that ordinary people met someone at work who they instantly became close friends with for the rest of their life while the person's to all intents and purposes identical twin at the next desk/cubicle/office left them cold and unmoved.

At that point Dean had remembered Adolf Hitler; a short, ugly man who by a fluke of genetics had possessed an intensely powerful charisma…the world would have been a much better place had he been as blandly pleasing to the eye as Chuckles...and extreme badness would have flowed had Chuckles possessed one tenth of the personal magnetism of Mr H.

Selena had presented the dagger to Chuckles like an acolyte presenting an offering to a priest, and with a pretty pout had declared it was such a shame there wasn't time for her to rape and torture Dean awhile until it was time to disembowel him. Chuckles had…well, chuckled…warmly, accepting the blade and smiling maliciously at Dean, as with no discernable change of expression he half-spun smoothly to the left and drove the dagger hilt-deep into the left side of Selena's torso just below her rib-cage, the audible snap of her lowest left rib breaking from the force of the blow brutally loud in the quiet cavern. Her eyes had only time to become enormous white orbs of shock as Chuckles sliced diagonally down to her right hip bone and pulled the dagger out with that _schlurping-sucking_ sound you got hauling something out of wet mud or swamp.

She crumpled to the ground like Pinocchio when the strings had been cut, unmoving in a final, instinctive foetal curl as Chuckles vigorously wiped the blade clean on the arm of her blouse. As she died, the glamour around her had wavered like on analogue TVs when something had interfered with the signal, and faded altogether leaving…

Just a woman; a middle-aged, Caucasian woman in her early mid-fifties in a conservative jacket, blouse and skirt – even a matronly pearl choker around her neck - who looked like the arch-type Suburban Everywoman.

She hadn't been a hag with a hook nose or a hairy mole, or dishpan-faced plain, or dumpy of figure; indeed, in life she had been a handsome woman, and trim. But even in death the skin round her eyes was tight with dissatisfaction, her forehead bore lines of perpetual discontent and there was a petulant kink to her mouth. In life a selfish person, never appreciative of what she had, always envious and resentful of those who were taller, prettier, younger, wealthier, still married, possessing children and grandchildren, independently single, unencumbered by children, successful in their career, fulfilled in their marriage, and even just simply happy – every way in which they enjoyed the things and the life that "I" should have/be living.

So when the Devil offered her hot cherry pie and cream, she'd wolfed down the bowl, confidently believing she was too clever for Evil to be able pour in that bottle of strychnine without her noticing.

Of course that was her mistake…that was _always_ the mistake.

_Continued in Chapter 2…_

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart


	2. Chapter 2

**_Disclaimer, Summary & Ratings: _**See Chapter 1

**THE WHOLE OF THE MOON**

**Chapter 2**

Now Chuckles was indulging in his little attempt at mind-games, fondling that dagger and regretfully stating that 'the woman' – her identity already forgotten as if unimportant, assuming he'd ever bothered to remember it – had indeed been right in her assessment of Dean as an exceptionally healthy human specimen.

"Sorry, dude, I'm not that kind of boy," Dean waggled his eyebrows. "I don't put out on the first date…well, not unless I get dinner first," he added.

Chuckles merely chuckled as if Dean was a witty raconteur up there with George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde or W. G. Grace. "I shall in no way touch your weak human frame," Chuckles smirked, then raised his voice slightly, "Come along now, my pet, time to finish up here."

The cavern was presumably L-shaped or had a deep side niche; a figure moved out of the blackness Dean had taken for solid wall, moving forward. For an instant relief was Dean's dominant emotion as his eyes raked over Sammy and he saw, for once, nary a lump or bump, no bruises, contusions or scrapes and – believe it or not – no precious red liquid leaking from any part of his brother's person, which had to be a first.

As instantly as it flared, relief was extinguished. Sam stopped directly in front of him about three feet away, less than an inch from the coagulating pool of blood still seeping from Selena. Or more accurately his body did, since his brain was apparently AWOL. There was no slack-mouthed drooling, but his face was just utterly blank; devoid of animation, expression and emotion, like a painted wooden doll. His eyes were open but stared at nothing…it was like in those comedy movies where you waved your hand in front of the guy's face and snapped your fingers or shoved a semi-naked dancing girl in front of him, but there was no reaction.

"Sam, are you okay?" Dean asked the dumb question anyway, just to hear his brother's voice.

There was no response from Sam, but Chuckles answered, "Oh he'll soon be better than okay, won't you my little pet?"

It was presumably a rhetorical question since Sam didn't respond to _him _either, but unperturbed Chuckles reached out and placed the dagger hilt in Sam's palm, who in turn slowly closed his hand around it and held it with blank patience.

"Whatever you've done to him, if you've hurt him, I'll kill you," Dean's voice was low, and vicious – and threatening in a way that nobody bound immobile and half-naked should have been able to pull off.

Chuckles chortled again, "I haven't injured his body in any way, but I have destroyed his mind; humans are much better as working animals when their minds are vegetables, if you'll forgive the pun…and actually, Sam is going to kill you, so I'll save my trepidation."

"Never going to happen!" Dean snorted derisively, even though a small, very cold lump was beginning to grow in his stomach.

He'd just pulled the classic 'get the Arch-villain bragging and gloating' diversionary manoeuvre, at which point Sam should have dropped the gormless act like a hot potato and stuck the dagger in Chuckles' heart. Sam stood there showing all the intelligence of someone who'd spent a lifetime collecting social security cheques and watching daytime TV while considering it 'healthy eating' to have a Diet Coke with his daily Big Mac once in a while. There were livelier _lichens_ on Antarctic rocks.

"Roosevelt Asylum tells a different story," Chuckles countered with spiteful amusement. "He's already tried to kill you once…this time he'll succeed."

"Are you kidding?" Dean retorted, "That was nothing more than a sibling squabble, Winchester style." He felt no need to justify his and Sam's relationship to the creep but the longer he talked, the more time he was giving Sam to snap out of it. "Sam _knew_ the shotguns were loaded with rock salt - yet he just stood there waiting for me to show up _without _swapping the load for real bullets while he was counting the ceiling cracks? And he knew there was no way I was gonna just _hand _him a loaded pistol when he was stood over me waving a shotgun in my face. You really think I don't know my brother's far too strong for your bark like a chicken cluck like a dog routine?"

"Strong?" Chuckles giggled as though this were the joke of the year. "A human? Pathetic wriggling worms as weak as wet paper, yet you think you rule the world…" Chuckles shook his head as if a parent baffled by the antics of a toddler, "Besides, even if he could have resisted me for more than a second, he was fighting himself as well, because he knows that your blood is all he needs…and I'll have him bathe in it momentarily. Then you'll be strong, my pet," Chuckles assured Sam almost kindly as if talking to an eager-to-please puppy, "and powerful enough to be my warhorse as I rule _everything_."

Ah…so that was it; _the players change, but the game remains the same_, Dean acknowledged. Clear away the window dressing and the individual why-I'm-better-than-god whining and Evil always went for one of two MOs: rule the world, or destroy it.

"Well, I suppose I should say I'm flattered, but I think you need to take another look at the instruction manual under the _Sacrificing Innocents for Ultimate Power _section," Dean suggested. "I'm pretty sure it has to be either a scantily-clad blonde teenage virgin or the superhero themselves…and _Sam_ has the power. Him Sam; me Dean. Trust me, the only criteria I fit currently is the scantily-clad tick-box, which considering you're fugly and non-female is something I'd appreciate if we could skip right on past."

Chuckles giggled again and contradicted gaily, "Of course you have the power; that is what makes this so delicious. You are the moon."

Dean had never dealt well with cryptic, especially cryptic delivered by evil bad guys claiming they had turned his baby brother into a puppet-slave and were going to have him fillet Dean like a salmon.

"Well I _am_ the handsome one," he acknowledged with false modesty, "but I have to say I think you're being rather forward…our relationship is_ not_ at the point where I'm comfortable with you calling me moonbeam."

For the first time faint irritation flickered in the bottomless black pits that were Chuckles' eyes at Dean's relentless refusal to take him seriously, even in such dire straits as this.

"How can you have destroyed so much power yet be so unaware?" Chuckles shook his head in something akin to honest bewilderment. "The moon is smaller than the sun; it doesn't shine brightly and burn hotly, yet all life on this world is as equally dependent upon it to exist as its bigger, brighter sibling. Nobody notices the moon, yet without it this world would slowly and agonisingly suffocate to death." He looked at Dean, "You are just as much the child of John and Mary Winchester as Samuel here is; your blood is just the same, and just because you lack the brightness of being psychic or the heat of possessing telekinesis does not make you any less powerful in the way that is yours."

"I don't have a way, I'm just the muscle…" the words slipped out before Dean could stop them, and he was aware that he had come dangerously close to engaging with the enemy as Chuckles' lyrical oratory tugged at him with hypnotic cadence. _Snap out of it, Dean_.

Chuckles gave that annoying giggle which Dean silently vowed he would bitch-slap out of the creep right before he killed it.

"And who is to say _that _is not your power, to be your brother's strength, his support, his shield…Like the world needs the moon: cool and shaded and restfully silent, with the Dark Side always turned away so he doesn't have to see it if he doesn't want to. Always close by, always there, always between Samuel and the sun that sometimes burns too fiercely, searing him with its flame."

"Do you crib this crap off Hallmark or key chains?" Dean retorted with a cockiness he was far from feeling; if Sam hadn't snapped out of it now he wasn't going to and Dean had no hope of working his way free of those ropes.

Chuckles smiled with perverted delight. "When he has ripped you open like a wolf-savaged carcass and bathed in your blood he will swallow up your power like the sun engulfing the moon and it will be as fuel to him."

"In your dreams," Dean sneered.

Chuckles laughed, "And in _his_…oh yes, he knew. Do you think that the reason he knew why Mary Worthington would come after him was the _only_ secret he kept from you? John Winchester the toaster-killer and chip-off-the-block Dean, happy to let the Geek-boy do the web-surfing and search-engine research, to spend the hours curled up with a good grimoire and just decant the Reader's Digest edition to you. The toxin generates the anti-toxin, and like calls to like. Poor Samuel, struggling with those agonising headaches and draining visions, knowing all the time that your blood will not just eradicate them from his body but increase his abilities a hundredfold? As if I was going to stand idly by until you figured out he _knew_ how to stop his own pain and got it out of him? Now your brother's power is as a single, yellow sun, but when he has your blood within him he will burn like a newborn galaxy and I will rule the universe by means of him for eons before his energy is exhausted."

Chuckles leaned in close to Dean's face, a vicious smile twisting his features, "So much pain when he sees, so much shame when he longs for the surcease he knows your blood can bring…such a fierce determination to endure rather than harm his big brother – and such a feeble resolution, like a rabbit determined to fight off the wolf with its dainty paws and fluffy tail. He will take what he needs from you…and I will devour him for eternity."

Stepping back from his taut-faced victim, Chuckles turned to Sam and placed one hand under his elbow, with mock solicitousness easing Sam forward until he was inches from his brother. Chuckles took a step away to the right and his chortling was almost loud enough to echo as he told Dean gleefully, "The last sight you'll see in this world is your baby brother gutting you like a slaughterhouse sow."

_Continued in Chapter 3…_

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart


	3. Chapter 3

**_Disclaimer, Summary & Ratings: _**See Chapter 1

**THE WHOLE OF THE MOON**

**Chapter 3**

Sam held the dagger in his hand, his fingers curled around the handle with his thumb lightly balancing the top of the hilt, loosely but confidently, just like Dean had taught him to. Too many people gripped a dagger like they were afraid it would turn and bite them if they eased their grip; a knife should flow through the air with sibilant, glinting grace, not be used in jerky slashes like someone trying to hack a face into an unripe Hallowe'en pumpkin. The faint light spilling in through the roof holes burnished the blade edge momentarily to bright silver as Sam slowly brought up his arm like the limb was an old factory service elevator.

Dean didn't close his eyes, or turn his head away. He didn't scream at Sammy to wake up or yell at him to snap out of it or beg him not to.

Because Sammy _needed_ this.

"'Just because someone is evil, doesn't mean they aren't telling the truth,'" Abraham Lincoln had once pointed out. And Chuckles had no reason to lie. The demon had the upper hand; the demon was in complete control. Even if Dean was suddenly set free with a single bound right now, his weary arms and numb from lack of circulation hands would be unable to do anything up to and including break his slump to the floor, and even if he attacked, there was no way to guarantee that destroying Chuckles while he clearly had some sort of mind-control mojo going on over Sammy wouldn't kill his brother as a by-product, and that was not going to happen.

So there was no necessity for the demon to consolidate its power, or stall for time, or try to regain the advantage by telling a fanciful lie that Sam needed Dean's blood to ease the pain of his visions and even increase his abilities _without_ any detriment to Sam himself.

_You're my brother, and I'd die for you_…did Sammy really think _that _grass only grew on his side of the fence? Sammy needed what Dean alone could provide, didn't he realise Dean would have willingly taken the blade to his own wrists if he'd known?

Besides, he had the satisfaction of knowing that Chuckles wouldn't outlive him by very long…With his peripheral vision as the slowly rising dagger seemed to expand and fill his horizon, Dean saw Chuckles standing a foot away from them on the right, looking more animated than he'd been the entire time…flushed cheeks, swollen and slightly parted lips and bright, glassy eyes…Dean had seen the expression of post-orgasmic completion in the mirror often enough to know the dude was getting off on watching this. But Dean had faith in Sammy's whammy, and in that Chuckles had vastly underestimated both the power of Sammy's will and the strength of his mind. Once Sammy had Dean's blood inside him his mystical abilities would explode like the sun going nova and Dean believed one hundred percent that his enraged brother's first act would be to make Chuckles deep-fried and crispy.

The dagger paused when it was level with Dean's left pectoral, and stayed motionless as if Sammy had forgotten the rest of the instructions.

"Sammy, it's alright," Dean shut out Chuckles and looked at his brother, only at his brother. "Everything's okay. I swear, Sammy, just relax; just do what you need to do."

He was unable to prevent his breath hitching as the tip of the dagger touched his skin just below his left nipple. For a second it dug in and Dean clenched his teeth in what he knew would a futile attempt to save Sammy from hearing his agonised screams. But the cut…just stung.

Sam slowly drew the knife down in a shallow cut, a diagonal line from Dean's upper left torso down to his right hip bone. A very narrow trickle of blood welled slowly in the superficial, stinging cut and smeared the lower curving edge of the dagger as Sam lifted it away. His face still that of an automaton, Sam reached out and slid the pads of his first and second left-hand fingertips down the line of the cut, lifting his fingers away and looking at them for a second before bringing them to touch his lips hesitantly.

Chuckles laughed in delight. "Oh my, you will be an eager workhorse, my pet. Ah, that I could let you toy with him for hours, but time and tide wait for no man…or me either, at least right now. So…finish him, little pet, now."

"Its okay, Sammy," Dean smiled at him gently. "I'm here, and it's alright. You know I love you, bro'; just let it happen."

Admittedly he wasn't looking forward to the next – the last – few minutes of his life, but that didn't matter, because this was for Sammy. Dean swallowed convulsively, his head pressing back into the uneven limestone, unable to look away as he watched his brother raise the dagger again so the curved cutting edge was almost resting on Sammy's left shoulder, feeling his own stomach and abdomen muscles helplessly tense as his brother swept the knife down at him…_Love you, little brother…_

_Continued in Chapter 4…_

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart


	4. Chapter 4

**_Disclaimer, Summary & Ratings: _**See Chapter 1

**THE WHOLE OF THE MOON**

**Chapter 4**

The tip of the dagger skinned a shallow groove of flesh just below Dean's belly button as Sam's sweeping slash continued into a graceful pirouette and with the momentum of all his bodyweight he drove the dagger into Chuckles' torso with such force that the creature was bodily lifted up onto tip-toes and sent staggering backwards.

Just like Selena, Chuckles had no time to do more than become wide-eyed and slack-faced with shock, and crumpled the floor as if pole-axed.

For a moment the world seemed to wait with bated breath as if for some sort of signal. The small part of Dean's mind that was remotely rational and logical looked at the dead entity and noted that unlike Selena no bones had cracked, indicating the thing probably didn't _have_ ribs.

Then Sam looked at him; his face was still expressionless. But his eyes were no longer like the windows of your neighbour's house when you peer in and see lifeless furniture and realise they've all gone to the mall. Sammy was in there again, but somehow it wasn't very reassuring.

Sam stepped in close, but without retrieving the dagger from its current scabbard of Chuckles' belly…was he seriously intending to unpick these hell-knots by hand?

Once again, Sam placed his first and second fingers on the cut he had made, only this time down at Dean's hip. Slowly he trailed them up the cut like he was a blind man reading Braille, and…

Holy healing, Batman; the shallow, stinging slice vanished as if Sam were zipping up his jacket, like it had never been. No stinging, no cut, not even the hint of a mark. That just from touching a few drops of Dean's blood to his lips? Clearly Chuckles's 'bathing in blood' routine had been the usual Gloating Psychopath overkill.

Sam took a step back and looked at the ropes, which simply fell away as if all they'd actually been waiting for was someone to suggest the idea. Dean gasped at the pain in his arms and his eyes automatically welled up with tears as blood sought to surge into his hands through the suddenly no longer constricted veins and he would have hit the cavern floor in a heap had Sam not been in the way of his fall so he landed against him. Sam clasped Dean's wrists with his own hands and once again there was that sensation of tingling warmth; the pain stopped and the raw, bloodied grooves in Dean's wrists became healthy, pink flesh.

Sam put his arm tight around Dean's waist and looped Dean's arm around his shoulder. "Come on, we need to get the stuff to barbeque the bad guy."

Despite Sam and his suddenly healing hands, Dean was still stiff and not totally steady on his feet. Together they made their way out of the cavern to discover that incredibly it was only mid-afternoon if that since Selena had accosted them after breakfast at the diner. They were halfway up a steep slope deep in the woods around Antietam and down through the trees they could see the Impala parked, or more accurately just stopped, in a clearing where presumably Selena had moved it to avoid arousing interest in the vehicle when nobody came to claim it.

"Thank god we're in the middle of nowhere at least," Sam muttered as he helped Dean down the trail.

"Yeah, not very likely any of the Alphabet noodle soup will see more than is good for them," Dean replied, feeling a sense of relief as they reached the Impala and it looked as if Selena had never thought to pop the trunk and have a look-see.

"Who cares about them?" Sam retorted. "I'm hugging a half-naked man…if we were still at Keedysville my rep' would be ruined."

"As what…the Prince of Geekdom? I'm the one girls would be throwing themselves off bridges over, dude, at the thought I was batting for the other team." Dean declared.

Sam let his brother rest against the rear passenger door and opened the trunk, blowing out a deep breath of relief when it was clear all their gear was intact and undisturbed. Plucking a black T-shirt out of their emergency 'we need to hide the blood-and-gore/our sucking chest wounds from rapidly approaching officials right now' pile, he held it out. "Here, put this on and improve the view."

Obediently Dean took the T-shirt and pulled it over his head, pulling out his charm necklace so it rested against the fabric as usual. Already he was feeling a lot better, though he supposed coming literally within a whisker of a hideous death and getting away alive and unscathed would do that to you.

Since this was a serious evil, he didn't bat an eyelid when Sam handed him a bottle of Holy Water as well as hefting a tub of salt and their trusty cigarette lighters as well as a box of matches.

"Say, how good is your healing whammy?" Dean asked.

"I don't know, why?" Sam immediately gave him his full attention, his eyes raking his brother's figure for signs of distress and missed injury.

"Well, next time give me a booster shot, another few inches will do nicely…above _and_ below." Dean leered lasciviously.

_Ladies and gentlemen…my brother, _only Dean Winchester could turn the trauma of being millimetres and milliseconds away from evisceration into sexual innuendo.

"It only works on illness and injury…you'll just have to deal with having the midget genetics…your genes and your jeans are your problem…jerk." Peculiarly, the final insult was said almost tenderly.

"At least I got the inches where it counts, bitch." The final epithet was as gently uttered by Dean.

There was a low hissing sound like steam escaping from a pan on a hotplate.

Both brothers turned and without apparently moving through the intervening space to get there, Sam was in front of his brother, his face a stern, almost judgemental mask.

Chuckles wasn't at his best as he stood next a poplar tree that his right hand pressed against in unconscious support. He had pulled out the dagger from his torso and held it in his hand. The weapon was completely covered in a viscous, lumpy black fluid that was presumably Chuckles' blood, but there was no mass exsanguination as with Selena. His face had shrunken tighter around his skull, giving him a skeletal appearance, and his teeth were now shorter and pointed, accentuating the image of the humanity fading from him.

"Aw, look, he came all the way down here so we could kill his evil ass more easily, wasn't that good of him?" Dean said mockingly, "For that, we'll torch your ass quick."

Chuckles hissed again contemptuously, "Worm…I am impervious to your fire…"

"But only until you're dead," Sam amended calmly, "after that you're just another corpse to char grill."

Chuckles bared his stumpy fangs, "I will rip you both asunder like tissue paper, and feasts on raw gobbets of your flesh –"

"Oh please!" Dean rolled his eyes. "Can't you guys ever come up with something more original than the maniacal super-villain riff? The obligatory psycho-speech is _so _last season…_and_ it would be a lot more impressive if you didn't have that great big so-noticeable fatal hole in your guts."

Chuckles snarled, "Fool…Do you think this is more than an irritation to _me_? My power is beyond your pathetic ability to comprehend…I will stand here and laugh as you use your puny knives and guns against me…I _have_ no internal organs to shred or bones to lethally crush."

"Yes, I know…" Sam spoke before Dean could fully absorb or react to the declaration, "Which is why I poisoned you to death."

"You did?" Dean's incipient look of alarm dissolved like hoarfrost. "Go, baby bro'!"

But Chuckles sneered, "I think not; is that the best you can do, such a feeble bluff, when I am impervious to herbs and charms and incantations, and when you had no thought or will save to serve my desire!"

Sam remained unperturbed. "Yes, I realised your powers when you tried to enslave me. That's why I let you bring yourself to your doom…my brother's blood will kill you soon."

Chuckles laughed – now not the smooth, condescending snigger of his faux humanity but the hissing, rasping cackle of his true form – at this hubris. "I have wallowed in the blood of the human vermin for millennia…I have swum in it and gorged myself fat on the gore of your kind…his blood is as insignificant as a teaspoonful of honey to me…"

"Except that my brother's blood is now sanctified."

There was an infinitesimal pause, as if the universe itself had been waiting for the words that momentarily seemed to hang visibly in the air, glowing and tinkling, as Dean understand without understanding that this moment was profound.

For a moment Chuckles' malicious sneer remained in place before faint uncertainty took hold. "Iiiiimmposssssssible," he slurred the word past thinner lips and a tongue now forked as he became ever more reptilian of appearance, his hair having begun floating down and faint impressions of scales taking the follicles place.

Sam looked at Chuckles with that stern visage, suddenly looking older and more authoritative. "You are always the same…you only know how to take. You steal, you snatch, you bully and coerce and force…it never occurs to you that you would be given, if only you asked."

Dean did not understand, and clearly neither did Chuckles, whose tongue flicked out between his lips grotesquely. "Him, when he I steeped in corruption? Foetid with sin until he stinks like a sewer?"

"Dude, glasshouses and stones –" retorted Dean.

Chuckles hissed malevolently and fixed sly eyes on Sam's face as he spitefully spat truths warped and twisted and removed from context. "Sanctified blood, from Dean Winchester, compulsive liar? Fourteen when he perpetrated his first credit card fraud? Card cheat and pool hustler?"

For the first time Dean was provoked to anguished rage as the thing exposed his shameful acts to Sammy, the one person in the world whose good opinion he needed as air, whose imagined look of disgust and contempt at his deviancy and shame was his second recurring nightmare after the perpetual No.1 hit of him failing to protect Sammy from being killed on a Hunt.

"Shut up!" He swung up the shotgun but Sammy's body was still between him and the creature, blocking his line of fire.

Chuckles spewed the words as if a cobra spitting venom, hacking with rasping glee, "Dean Winchester, rich women's _whore_? Playing their pool-boy and rough-trade fantasies for gas and grocery money? Seducer and womaniser…thief and pickpocket…_drug_ dealer and murderer –"

Dean tried to barge past Sam, the shotgun raised to stop the litany of his sins, but Sam simply held out his arm as an immovable bar, his palm flat and warm against Dean's chest and incredibly his hand moved slightly like a loving father rubbing a small child's tummy soothingly.

Sam looked at Chuckles, and Dean looked at Sam, and Sam looked unsurprised, but also unmoved, not contemptuous and not disgusted.

"Love is sacrifice…" Sam told the thing simply, his voice soft yet somehow ringing in the small glade like a sweet crystal bell chiming. "…Which is why Evil always loses out in the end. You never _had_ any control over my mind or ability to damage my will at all, though you could command my physical body for a little while. And that is why you brought your death upon yourself…you broke your own spell over me the instant you told my brother the truth that I needed his blood."

"It is impossible for his blood to be sanctified!" But Chuckles' voice lacked conviction and despite the increasing lack of humanity to his features he suddenly looked like nothing so much as someone who had eaten a burger too fast and was getting bad heartburn.

Sammy smiled, a happy, affectionate smile, like when he was really little and after dinner when he was bathed and warm and sleepy, Dean would lift him onto his lap and read to him from his favourite book of bedtime stories as Sammy snuggled in the cocooning safety of Dean's arms, delighting in the way Dean gently rubbed his chin in the silky hair of Sammy's scalp and the way his brother would editorialise the sanitised tales and babyishly but laughingly mock-scolding Dean when his brother changed the endings to things like "'and the third little pig whipped out both his .45s and turned the wolf into a rug'" or "'and little Red Riding Hood pulled out an AK47 and screamed at the wolf-punk to make her day before she blew his ass to hell'".

"Of course it is, because when you told him I needed his blood to stop it hurting, you had no advantage in lying, so he knew you were telling the truth, and from that moment on, Dean was no longer your _victim_." Sammy told Chuckles softly with something akin to genuine pity in his tone.

And Dean finally began to understand.

"My brother loves me more than anything in the world, and there is nothing he would not do for me. He was a _willing sacrifice_ for my sake; if you had released his bonds there and then he would not have stopped my death-stroke. His offered his lifeblood freely and without resentment on the altar of my need, and was thus made holy."

The words echoed like a bell and seemed to resonate in every atom of the air itself and the thing before them shuddered in physical pain from the very utterances of love, and faith, and sacrifice.

"Every drop of blood within him was saturated with his love, and there was enough in that small smear on the edge of the dagger to kill a legion of your kind," Sam's voice was deeper and sonorous, carrying a hint of thunder. "You were dead from the instant it was plunged into you, moving through your physical carcass like sweet incense, cleansing this world of your vileness from the inside out…and it should have infused every rotting pore of you right about….now." he finished as Chuckles suddenly and simply keeled over like a felled tree.

Not even leaves flirted up at the impact, as if the body were already insubstantial and not affecting the world around it.

It shrivelled up like a deflated balloon when you placed it on a fire, and then the tiny spot on the ground began to smoke, not black but white, and then there was nothing.

_Concluded in Epilogue…_

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart


	5. Epilogue

**_Disclaimer, Summary & Ratings: _**See Chapter 1

**THE WHOLE OF THE MOON**

**Epilogue**

Dean opened his eyes as the motel door was eased closed in total silence. Sammy had never been able to sneak out on his big brother; did he really think he was going to start pulling off the feat now?

He had got up, pulled on his jeans, T-shirt and leather coat and boots within a minute, though not rushing, but counted five full periods of sixty seconds before he left the hotel room and walked unerringly across the road towards the haphazardly flickering sign that declared BAR.

He went inside as an eddy current with a group of rowdy college-age juniors, his eyes adjusting to the gloom with the ease of long practice, instantly spotting the lanky frame he sought regardless of the smoky haze and the row of backs-to-the-door barstool occupants.

It wasn't hard; he had known Sammy was going to come here hours ago. They had watched Chuckles – and the dagger - disappear, but then Sam just turned and walked back to the car. About to protest and having the Holy Water in his hand, the words had not passed his lips as Sam turned and smiled and said that there was no need, and "'just feel it'". And he had. This glade was ground made holy by virtue of a freely-offered sacrifice of love and there was no need to bind evil with the salt of the earth and purify it by fire and cleanse it with blessed water, because evil could not manifest here.

They had driven out of Keedysville but pulled in at Sharpsburg, the sun sinking below the horizon in glorious display of indescribable colours through the windshield of Dean's car as if in homage. They had not spoken since the glade but Dean had felt no need to shatter the silence with clumsy words as Sam paid for one night at the motel in cash.

Not until in their room had Dean tried to apologise for the things the demon had revealed he had done but Sam looked at him gravely and told him that this day he had been granted a _tabula nova_: clean slate. Fresh and wiped of any mark.

Sam had said that there were certain things they had to do to get by that were tolerated…and then he had looked Dean in the eyes and asked if he intended to be a whore again, or sell drugs again…or kill people, even evil people like drug runners and gun runners, again. He had accepted Dean's fervent negative as the pleading for forgiveness it was, and not for a second did he look at Dean with disgust or contempt or scorn, as if knowing such would eviscerate Dean far more agonisingly than that dagger could ever have done. That was not why he was here, in this bar; those sins were not the reason why, after they had simply gone to bed as darkness fell, Sam had begun to get angry and upset, as Dean had known he was as he lay in the other bed, feeling his brother's rage and distress grow like the emotions were physical, tangible increases in air pressure courtesy of that internal barometer that was labelled simply: SAMMY.

The pressure would have to be released or blow, and so Sammy had slipped away to stew in the fond belief Dean slept obliviously.

Dean parked his butt on the bar stool next to Sam's. The invisible but blatant exclusion zone radiating from Sammy didn't apply to him; Dean didn't even notice it was there, neither of them ever did. There was a row of shot glasses in front of Sam on the bar; five were empty, he was holding one in his hand and three more remained topped to the brim.

Dean took the one nearest himself and downed it in one gulp before pulling a face. "Dude, you are such a cheapskate. You won't even get snockered on the good stuff."

Sam's jaw clenched but he didn't immediately answer, just tossing back the whisky in one gulp, with no discernible effect. In line with the maxim that warned, 'don't confuse the fact that I don't with the idea that I can't', that neither of them usually drank to excess didn't mean they couldn't 'hold' their liquor.

"I'm sorry," Sam said finally, looking at the next shot but not picking up the glass.

"For what?"

"I cut you," Sam said the words flatly, oblivious to the widening eyes of the barman who discreetly moved out of earshot, clearly believing they were some sort of S&M bondage couple whose 'fun' had crossed a line.

Dean picked up the second of the three remaining shot glasses and downed it with a moue of distaste. "No you're not."

Sam's eyes locked with his own. It was true and both knew it. Sam wasn't upset, he was _angry_ with Dean…furious at him for _not_ fighting back, for not fighting for his life….against Sam. But he couldn't express that anger, not because that would have ruined the whole poisoning-Chuckles-with-Dean's-sacred-blood plan, but because there was no point, as both them equally knew. Dean was never going to apply any sense of self-preservation when it came to his brother's wellbeing, and though Sam hated the fact that Dean's self-preservation came to a juddering halt whenever _his_ welfare was threatened, there was a part of him that clung to that comfort and security, and both of them knew that as well…so it was Sammy who looked away first.

Dean remained silent, as there was nothing to say. They wouldn't talk about this; they never had and they never would, because Dean never made his Sammy a promise that he knowingly could not – or would not – keep, or die trying. Dean would not vow to try and take care of his own hide when they both knew he had no intention, maybe was not even _capable_, of keeping such an oath…and Dean never broke his promises to his brother.

"You could have _yelled_ at me, or kicked or _something_!" Sam muttered with the irrational petulance of someone on a major guilt trip.

"No need," Dean shrugged, "I knew that no matter what happened…everything would be alright."

Sam growled, "I'm the one with the Shining, so how could you know for sure?"

"My brother loves me more than anything in the world, and there is nothing he would not do for me."

The barman risked turning back to the couple of men who had definitely needed their privacy, only to blink at the sight of a single, full shot glass on the counter and an empty pair of bar stools, just catching a glimpse of two silhouettes as the entrance door swung shut on the view of their backs.

And they walked side by side and shoulder to shoulder out of the bar without a backward glance, back to their motel to catch some shut-eye before they moved on to take out the next fugly evil that thought it was going to hurt innocent people with impunity.

© 2006, Catherine D Stewart

**Author's Note:** The statements about the moon in this story are scientific fact. If there were only the sun, but no moon, the Earth would be as lifeless as Mars. Without the moon to create tides, the world's water would stagnate and starve of oxygen; without the moon acting on the Earth's magnetic field, solar particles would shred everything on the surface; without the moon to acting on the hormonal cycle of women, we would be unable to successfully gestate children. That was the kernel of my story, having researched the info for something else when I also happened to swot up on my biographical knowledge of Mozart. Leopold and Anna Mozart had _two_ musically-gifted children. Their elder child, daughter Maria-Anna, was a gifted pianist who in any other family would have been fêted as a prodigy, had she not been the sibling of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The parallels struck me as obvious – because of Mary and Jess and his 'Shining' Sam has always been the Winchester Mozart, but Dean had the same parents and the same genes and the same upbringing. Just because he wasn't big and shiny and obvious didn't mean he wasn't talented, and it happens in real life. I went through school with an incredibly bright girl who lost her joy in learning because teachers foolishly constantly expected her to be a clone of her elder brother, who was a scientific genius that studied Astrophysics at Oxbridge.

The Whole of the Moon, by The Waterboys:

I pictured a rainbow  
you held it in your hands  
I had flashes   
but you saw the plan  
I wandered out in the world for years   
you just stayed in your room  
I saw the crescent  
You saw the whole of the moon  
The whole of the moon...

You were there in the turnstiles  
with the wind at your heels  
you stretched for the stars  
and you know how it feels  
to reach too high, too far, too soon  
You saw the whole of the moon

I was grounded   
while you filled the skies  
I was dumbfounded by truth  
you cut through lies  
I saw the lone empty valley  
you saw Brigadoon  
I saw the crescent  
You saw the whole of the moon

I spoke about wings  
you just flew  
I wondered I guessed and I tried  
you just knew  
I sighed  
but you swooned  
I saw the crescent  
You saw the whole of the moon  
The whole of the moon...

With a torch in your pocket  
and the wind at your heels  
you climbed on the ladder  
and you know how it feels  
to get too high, too far, too soon  
You saw the whole of the moon  
The whole of the moon...

Unicorns and cannonballs, palaces and piers,  
trumpets, towers and tenements  
wide oceans full of tears  
flags, rags, ferryboats, scimitars and scarves  
every precious dream and vision underneath the stars  
You climbed on the ladder  
with the wind in your sails  
you came like a comet  
blazing your trail  
too high, too far, too soon  
You saw the whole of the moon.


End file.
